3/01
by Gerald L. Bepko, Chancellor
Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) Adapted from the speech delivered on Wednesday, February 7, 2001, 12 noon, in the University Place Hotel Ballroom on the IUPUI campus.
A future not to be feared, but celebrated
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is a core campus of Indiana University, which is a multicampus university transforming into what we believe will be America’s new public university of the future. We have strong leadership from Indiana University President Myles Brand, who has developed a powerful vision for Indiana and its research universities, sometimes summarized by the expression “Miracle in the Midwest.” Indiana’s partner in managing IUPUI is Purdue University, which is itself embarking on a strategic planning effort that will include significant parts of IUPUI.
Purdue has a new and dynamic leader, Martin Jischke, who has already joined Myles Brand in recreating an alliance of the public research institutions in Indiana that should be extraordinarily important for our state and provide just the right foundation for IUPUI. Within this overarching context, I’d like to focus on the IU and Purdue programs here, at IUPUI.
Among our most immediate concerns is a continuing challenge in our undergraduate programs. Try as we might, we have been unable to improve our undergraduate
retention rates for a critical cohort – first-time, full-time, first-year students. For more than a decade, this issue has been at the top of our agenda and the subject of extraordi- nary investment. Today, with an increasing number of full-time undergraduates, it represents a problem that could affect all we do.
Our undergraduate programs are conducted at a high level of productivity, especially in view of the low level of state funding for the general academic programs at IUPUI, which I will touch on again on page 6. Each year we graduate more students with
associate and baccalaureate degrees. This past year we graduated more such students than in any other year in our history. This year-by-year increase has taken place at the same
1
2 3 time our undergraduate student body head count shrunk from what it was in the
early 1990s. In 1990-1991, when IUPUI had 29,384 undergraduates enrolled, 2,488 graduated. In 1999-2000, with 19,843 enrolled, 2,968 graduated.
Of special interest is that we have had a dramatic increase in the number of minority students who earn degrees. In 1990-91, 292 minority students earned degrees or
certificates through IUPUI programs. Among them were 186 African Americans. This past year, 293 African Americans earned degrees or certificates, up 58 percent, and a total of 494 minority students earned degrees or certificates at IUPUI, up 69 percent. We are confident that this record will improve even more as we implement such strategies as minority-oriented scholarships that were recommended by Purdue President Martin Jischke in the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges (NASULGC) annual George Washington Carver lecture last fall.
Given the increasing number of degrees we award every year at the undergraduate level, we know that good things are happening and that we are meeting important community needs. Unfortunately, in the cohort of first-time, full-time, first-year undergraduate students — the cohort used for intercampus and institutional measure- ment — our numbers have not changed, either in persistence from first to second year or in six-year graduation rates. IUPUI has been successful as a place to start and from which to transfer; it has been successful as a place to which to transfer and finish; but it has not been successful enough at graduating those full-time students who begin at IUPUI. The reasons may have as much to do with the changing nature of this cohort as with our efforts, but each year we renew and redouble those efforts, and we must
continue that process, now under closer scrutiny by the Trustees of Indiana University and the public. In particular, we need to enhance campus life by completing plans for some additonal student housing and a student center.
A second challenge is the threat to state support for higher education produced by the state’s financial challenges, at the very moment when cultivated intelligence, or brain power, has surpassed every other ingredient in achieving economic success and quality of life. Cultivated human intelligence is a completely renewable, environmentally favorable, inexhaustible resource, if only we have the courage and the vision to invest in it.
Today’s financial challenges may have a more negative impact on those parts of the higher education system that have formed most recently – the parts that address new and future needs that were not observable in the century before the last one, when much of Indiana’s higher education system was conceived.
Indiana will not succeed unless it can encourage and nourish successful population centers, the most important of which is centered in Indianapolis. As the region is now defined to include Lafayette, Bloomington, Terre Haute, Muncie, and Anderson, it is clearly the economic, cultural, and governmental center of the state, and the state’s best hope for success in America’s ever-developing and transforming economy and culture.
Instead of spreading across Indiana’s 35,870 square miles, and telecommuting or cybercommuting, the population of Indiana is most likely to concentrate in some areas, especially this Indianapolis region. Among other things, this reflects the high-tech/high- touch phenomena first described by trend observer John Naisbitt. This center of population that we call the Indianapolis region must be, in the true meaning of the Greek word, Indiana’s “great city” or “metropolis.”
In order for Indianapolis to be a great city, it must have an excellent system of higher education. At the heart of this region, in the midst of this urban concentration, at the crossroads of the state, we must have an anchor, an excellent public campus that can be an exemplar of engagement and an intellectual energy source rooted in the traditions of excellence of the state’s great research universities. It should be thoroughly engaged with the larger communities it serves, and it should be connected with its parent campuses so
IUPUI, Why not both?
Each year, the number of students who earn Indiana University or Purdue University degrees at IUPUI continues to grow.
The Eiteljorg Museum IUPUI collaborates with the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art through shared programming and practical experiences for students in the arts and museum-related studies.
4 5 that it can support Indiana’s Bloomington/Indianapolis/Lafayette research corridor – a
vital symbol of Indiana’s future.
It won’t surprise anyone that I am describing IUPUI, with all its different schools, centers, identities, and constituencies – a confusing but novel and responsive model for a new millennium. Because IUPUI’s very purpose is to move away from the notion of campuses as “walled cities,” it is important for us to develop this model as an IU and Purdue partnership and not as a separate university, which has often been suggested.
IUPUI, as a campus, has come a long way. Nationally, we are recognized as a leader in innovations in undergraduate learning. Just this year we were designated by the Association of American Colleges and Universities and Pew Charitable Trusts as one of sixteen campuses participating in the Greater Expectations Initiative for “visionary, campuswide designs for a contemporary education.” IUPUI is one of the first ten university campuses to receive a Pew Charitable Trust grant for course redesign using technology to improve learning in large enrollment undergraduate courses. IUPUI has been given an award, along with Portland State and Temple University, for “restructuring for urban student success.” In that project, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, external reviewers wrote that “IUPUI has done so much so fast within . . . limited resources . . . we are quite simply in awe.” These recognitions are a reflection of the fact that the depth and quality of faculty in all our programs continue to rise impressively.
The IU School of Medicine continues to flourish with its excellent new dean, Craig Brater, who has assembled an outstanding new leadership team for the school. The Clarian Health Partners consolidation of the former university hospitals with Methodist Hospitals looks more and more like just the right combination for an academic medical center, especially compared to ventures in other parts of the country. Despite vigorous competition, the school and its faculty continue to rise in the recognition they receive from funders and professional associations. For example, this year no less than eleven
national associations in academic medicine are headed by members of the medical school faculty. (See page 12.)
This year IUPUI’s total full-time equivalent enrollments have gone up, once again, despite massive referrals of underprepared students to the new Community College of Indiana. This represents a successful acceleration of the effort we undertook with Ivy Tech State College more than a decade ago to ensure that IUPUI’s undergraduate student body is better prepared for college-level study and better poised to succeed in earning baccalaureate degrees, and also to ensure a seamless system of postsecondary education in this region with academically sound transfer and articulation agreements.
We are in the midst of the quiet phase of what should be a spectacular fund raising campaign for all IUPUI programs, to be formally announced on September 8th this year.
Our goal is likely to exceed $500 million. With inflation and timing working in our favor, this could be the largest campaign in the history of public higher education in Indiana.
With the magnificent $105 million grant from the Lilly Endowment for the Indiana Genomics Initiative, developed by IU President Myles Brand, IUPUI-based programs have catapulted, at least for this year, to first place in our state in terms of external grant support. In fact, it is very likely that this year IUPUI programs, in total, will earn more in external grants than the Bloomington and West Lafayette campuses put together.
But how will the state’s financial situation affect this emerging component of higher education? Our health schools – the oldest and best developed of IUPUI’s schools – are below their peers in state funding by a not insignificant margin. The law school has per full-time-equivalent student expenditures that are 169th out of the 181 law schools in the United States.
White River Gardens White River Gardens and the nearby Indianapolis Zoo offer an inviting respite for users of the canal walks and trails proliferating around the IUPUI campus.
Indiana Historical Society Shared access to educational resources is one area of collaboration contemplated with the nearby Indiana Historical Society and the new Indiana State Museum, now under construction.
6 7 (Parenthetically, I must say that it seems short-sighted to underfund these graduate
professional programs. They serve as a capstone for so many of our best Indiana college graduates and future leaders – those who are more likely to stay in Indiana.)
Because of the large number of students involved, however, we often focus on our general academic programs, which include many graduate programs and an engineering school. Excluding the law school, the per-student state appropriation for our general academic programs is 12 percent lower than for Vincennes University – a two-year junior college. IUPUI general academic programs have full-time equivalent student appropriations that are 36 percent less than Ball State University and 46 percent less than Indiana State University.
On top of that, it appears that funds continue to be drained from IUPUI by changes in formulas. For example, two years ago the plant expansion formulas (the ones that provide utilities and maintenance reimbursement for new buildings) were adjusted to a lowest common denominator, not estimated actual costs. This punishes all campuses, but especially those that are growing. It also punishes campuses that have laboratories that are costly to operate and campuses that use private funding to build new facilities with atria and other aesthetic features that would not have been possible without private investment. What does this mean in practical terms? Under the formula manipulation, the projects currently in development, such as the new law school building, will result in a loss of about $3.7 million per year in perpetuity. This will significantly erode state support for IUPUI-based programs.
What can the citizens of Indiana and IUPUI supporters do? Support the universities’
requests of the 2001 Indiana General Assembly, especially the Indiana Commission for Higher Education (ICHE) recommendations. Higher education needs reasonable inflation adjustments to retain faculty, enrollment adjustments to pay for additional students already enrolled, and the technology funding provided for the past four years
(but now in jeopardy). IU’s request includes funding for its new School of Informatics, which is so important to Indiana’s future economy, and capital projects such as the science building in Bloomington and the completion of IUPUI’s Classroom Academic Building/ Communications Technology Complex (the replacement for the decrepit Mary Cable Building), as well as a small contribution toward the student center that we need here at IUPUI. Little of this will be realized for IUPUI, however, unless there is a restoration of reasonable funding for operating costs of buildings. We hope your legislative representatives will hear from you on these matters.
This is especially important because our IU and Purdue programs are at the right time, at the right place, with the right concepts, and nearly all the right ingredients. We feel a little like George Patton did in the latter days of World War II when his Third Army was advancing rapidly across Europe. At a propitious moment, European Theater of Operations Commander General Dwight Eisenhower informed Patton that the Third Army could have no more gasoline. Patton fumed, “Give me a few hundred thousand gallons of gasoline and I will take Berlin in five days.” Well, here we are. Give us the modicum of support reflected in the ICHE recommendation, and IUPUI will play a major role on behalf of IU and Purdue in capturing the future for the state of Indiana.
A primary reason for our potential is our context. Cities and regions have an organic existence, with moments of decline, periods of growth, times of exceptional energy and hints of a sense of destiny. Today, Indianapolis is a city on the move. It is like Chicago was at the end of the 19th Century. In 1893, Chicago hosted the Columbian Exposition.
Chicago sought a way to show itself not just as it would later be described by Carl Sandburg – a city of broad shoulders, shocker of wheat, and builder of railroads. After a century of rapid growth as a frontier city, Chicago sought to be an aggressive competitor with other major cities around the globe. It vied for the right to host the Columbian Exposition and World’s Fair with St. Louis, New York, and Washington – and won.
Eskenazi Hall
Eskenazi Hall, the new home for our Herron School of Art, will soon take its place among the cultural amenities on the southern perimeter of campus.
Indianapolis Urban league The Indianapolis Urban League is a new neighbor being welcomed to the north of campus and a long-standing partner with IUPUI in workforce and economic development.
8 9 The city then constructed buildings, canals, and lagoons along the lakefront. It built
the Midway, which now defines the geography of the University of Chicago campus. It built the Palace of Fine Arts, which is now the Museum of Science and Industry. This took place as the Rockefellers were investing in the University of Chicago, which they later called “the best investment they ever made,” and which grew up in the same Jackson Park area that was the site of the Columbian Exposition.
Most important of all, the Columbian Exposition helped the heartland understand that technology was no longer a “frightening . . . symbol of the shift from an agrarian to an industrial nation, but the harbinger of a new era of progress.” Visitors to the
Columbian Exposition were meant to see that, “one of the most potent agents of change in their society - electricity - was not to be feared, but celebrated. . . .The celebration of technology at the World’s Columbian Exposition set Americans on the path toward modernity in the 20th century. . . . In the Great World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, we find the blueprint for modern America.”* Later in the 20th century, the century of physics, launched by Einstein’s theories of relativity, the secrets of atomic energy were unveiled and applied near Chicago’s Midway, in Enrico Fermi’s laboratory on the University of Chicago campus, and the world was changed forevermore.
Think of what’s happening in Indianapolis today. I believe it’s a city whose people are ready for the 21st century, a city that is ready to take its place on a national and global stage.
Like Chicago in the late 19th century, Indianapolis has been building momentum over the past 25 years, beginning with the sports movement: the National Sports Festival, the relocation of national sports governing boards, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships, new facilities, world-renowned auto races, major league teams, Olympics competitions, and some world’s championships. Within the last year we’ve hosted our first National Football League playoff game, the National Basket- ball Association finals, the NCAA final four, the U.S. Grand Prix – and on campus, the Olympic swimming trials and the RCA Tennis Championships. Through sports, the
city has raised its spirits, its aspirations, and its identity. It has shown itself to the world in a most attractive way and has claimed a place of recognition as a superb venue for major sports attractions.
For more than a decade, our emphasis has been broadening from sports to other methods of expanding economic growth. One of the building blocks for economic growth is the quality of life: the conditions necessary to attract and keep talented, wealth- creating people. This includes family life, cultural institutions, and the sorts of activities that are supported by the new investments near campus. Our campus sits in the midst of the city’s arts and cultural corridor. We have on our borders the new Indianapolis Urban League facility, the Walker Urban Life Center, the Indiana Historical Society, an
expanded Eiteljorg Museum, the new State Museum, the NCAA Headquarters, the Indianapolis Zoo, the Congressional Medal of Honor Memorial, and shortly we will have on campus, at the fulcrum of this corridor, Eskenazi Hall, a new facility for the Herron School of Art. These cultural institutions are enhanced by the canal walks and other amenities which complement the new state government complex that was built in the city’s late 20th century crescendo of growth, optimism, and planning for the future.
Through Myles Brand’s vision of “a Miracle in the Midwest,” we have intensified our focus – combining government, business, and the research capacities of our universities – on the types of economic activity that will be most important for the future. The
Indiana General Assembly established the Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology Fund, which we hope is renewed. Our campus is both physically and programmatically tied to this growth.
Health, longevity, and quality of life will grow in importance in the 21st century economy, both in the United States and around the world. We have been preparing for that by developing programs and facilities such as the Medical Research and Library Building; the Indiana Cancer Pavilion; the Van Nuys Medical Sciences addition; the Riley Outpatient Center; the Cancer Research Institute; its clone, or Research II, now under construction; and Research III soon to be developed.
Van Nuys Medical Science Building The Van Nuys Medical Sciences Building renovation and expansion is an example of how IUPUI is intensifying its research capacity on the types of economic activity, such as health-related industries, that will be important for the future.
NCAA Hall of Champions Indianapolis’s sports movement brings visitors to campus for pre-Olympic competitions and professional tennis, as well as outings to nearby Victory Field and the NCAA Hall of Champions in White River State Park.
*Julie K. Rose, “The World’s Columbian Exposition: Idea, Experience, Aftermath” (master’s thesis, University of Virginia, 1996)
*4 Jan. 2001 <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/wce/title.html>
10 11 Another key to economic growth is information technology, which we are addressing
through our technology-focused University Library; the new IU School of Informatics;
the Indiana Pervasive Computing Research labs, three of which are here at IUPUI and funded by the Lilly Endowment; the Network Operations Center for Internet II and other advanced networks – most of which will be housed in the new Communications Technology Complex. That complex will be the anchor for an information technology precinct on the IUPUI campus, which is connected with the Purdue Science and Engineering Buildings that were completed about eight years ago.
This Communications Technology Complex will also be one of two portal buildings that will create a new front door for the campus on West Street. The other portal is the Inlow Law Building that will open in a couple of months. These buildings will stand astride a majestic courtyard and be surrounded by parks, both Military Park on the south and a new park to be created on the north in front of the Sigma Theta Tau Building.
West Street will become a magnificent tree-lined boulevard. Although it won’t be exactly like the Midway in Chicago, it will be an important symbol of progress, not only because of the location and grandeur of the buildings, but because of the high profile of the nationally renowned architects involved, such as Robert A. M. Stern, SmithGroup, and John Belle, who are responsible for the design of the buildings and surrounding areas. At least as important, for those of us who are taxpayers, most of the development at IUPUI (nearly 70 percent of facilities construction) has been accomplished without state funds.
All these ingredients will increase the momentum of our city and region: the
investments that have been made in education and related supports for economic growth;
the investments in cultural institutions; the new front door of the campus with parks and portal buildings designed by leading architects; the boulevard that West Street will become; the growth in external support for research here, punctuated by the Indiana Genomics Initiative; the Campaign for IUPUI that will culminate in 2004; the millen- nium and turn of the century; and the emergence of Indianapolis as a city of the future.
We want these facilities, activities, and events to energize our populations. We want the people of this region to see human genome research and applications of information technology not as frightening symbols of the shift from a manufacturing economy to the new information age, but as harbingers of a new era of progress. These investments in the health sciences and information technology are to be agents of change, not to be feared, but celebrated. We want these agents of change to provide a vision and a blueprint for the future as we set ourselves on a course for a new modern era of risk, competition, growth, and success.
Just as the 20th century was the century of physics, the 21st century will be the century of life sciences and genomics. By 2010, we believe that many of the secrets of the human genome will be unlocked here on West Michigan Street, and applied in a way that will help people live longer and have a better quality of life. And, once again, the world will be changed forevermore.
In 2020, people who have spent their lives in Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka, and Lake Forest, Illinois, will be worrying about why all their bright young people are moving to Indianapolis, the new center of health and information technology, a city that has the highest economic development prospects and quality of life. And, in 2020, Indiana will win back its 10th seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Today, at this crossroads of time and place, we’re going to do our best to bring to life the slogan created by the IU Foundation for our comprehensive fundraising campaign:
“IUPUI – The Future is Here.”
Inlow Hall
Inlow Hall, the new home for the IU School of Law – Indianapolis, opens this year at West and New York Streets across from the nearby Indiana Government Complex.
CTC/CAB The Communications Technology Complex Classroom Academic Building planned for the corner of Michigan and West Streets joins Inlow Hall in offering a grand new portal to the campus.
LEADERSHIP FOR A NEW MILLENNIUM
The following have been elected or selected to lead their professional organizations at the national level.
D. Craig Brater, MD, dean and Walter J. Daly Professor: president of the Central Society for Clinical Research (2000-01) and of the Association of Professors of Medicine (2000-01), and chairman of the American Board of Clinical Pharmacology.
Jose Biller, MD, professor and chairman of the Department of Neurology: president of the Executive Committee, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (2000-01).
Stephen Bogdewic, PhD, vice chairman of academic affairs, Department of Family Medicine:
chairman of the Board of Directors, Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (2000-01).
Larry H. Einhorn, MD, distinguished professor, Indiana University: president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2000-01).
C. Conrad Johnston Jr., MD, distinguished professor, Indiana University: president of the American Association for Osteoporosis Foundation (2000-01).
Regina Kreisle, MD, PhD, assistant director for curriculum development and adjunct associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Lafayette Medical Education Center: presi- dent of the Group for Research in Pathology Education (2001-02).
William J. Martin II, MD, Floyd and Reba Smith Professor of Medicine and director, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, Occupational Medicine: president of the American Thoracic Society (2000-01).
Richard T. Miyamoto, MD, chairman and Arilla Spence DeVault Professor, Department of Otolaryn- gology-Head and Neck Surgery: president of the American Neurotology Society (2000-01).
Ora H. Pescovitz, MD, executive associate dean for research and Edwin Letzter Professor of Pediat- rics: president of the Society for Pediatric Research (2000-01).
Terry E. Reed, Phd, MPH, professor, Division of Hereditary Diseases and Family Studies: president of the American Dermatoglyphics Association (1999-01).
Douglas P. Zipes, MD, distinguished professor; professor of pharmacology and toxicology, and director of the Division of Cardiology and the Krannert Institute of Cardiology: president of the American College of Cardiology (2001-02).
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